


Vignettes

by Kizzywiggle



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Drabbles, Fluff, James is a neat freak, Other, Q is a slob, Rating May Change, Tags May Change, Written comic strip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 00:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8379784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kizzywiggle/pseuds/Kizzywiggle
Summary: Two very different men.Two very different ways of viewing the world.Can they overcome their differences to find Twu Wuv?!?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I had an idea for a series of short, silly scenes between James and Q - a bit like a written comic strip.
> 
> My headcanon for these drabbles have Q behaving a bit more like the Old Q: he's fed up with Bond's cleverness and disregard for Q Branch property. He's *completely* unaware that Bond has a massive crush on him.
> 
> Bond, meanwhile, knows ninety-six ways to kill a man with toothpaste, but doesn't know how to tell Q he fancies the pants off him...so he breaks stuff.
> 
> Featuring cameo appearances from my 00Q ladies from Twitter.

James Bond, Double-Oh Seven, fully licenced to kill as well as intimidate, maim, seduce and (on one memorable occasion) play Twister in order to further the aims of Her Majesty’s government, stood with his hands shoved into his trouser pockets and looked faintly sheepish. He rumbled something which was a bastard mash-up of an explanation and an apology and peered hopefully up at Q from beneath contritely lowered brows.

Q wasn't fooled. He'd about had it up to here with Bond and his cavalier attitude towards the really quite finite resources of Q-Branch, and he'd also had it with MI6’s most un-secret agent’s 'apologies’. No matter what he, Q, did by way of reprisal, discipline or reinforcement, Bond persisted in breaking or losing every piece of kit he was given. Q had finally had enough.

"OK, Double-Oh Seven, it's not a problem,” he said calmly. “Just fill out the requisite notification forms and leave them with Sandra before you go…that will be all.” he added, when Bond just stood there gaping. Sandra looked up at the pair on hearing her name and smiled. Q raised despairing eyebrows at her before he turned his back and went to flick on the kettle on his workbench. He needed tea, and right this minute. Maybe a hobnob, too? He deserved it, dealing with Bond this early on a Monday.

Q hummed quietly as he plopped a teabag into his Scrabble mug and waited for the kettle to boil. His mind was already filing Double-Oh Seven's latest demeanour in the mental box marked 'Do Not Enter!!!’, and moving on to more productive avenues of thought. He pulled an old-fashioned Dictaphone from his pocket and flicked it on, recording a couple of ideas before they were lost in the constant stream of thoughts whizzing through his head.

The kettle flicked off, steam pluming around Q’s scruffy dark hair, and he poured water into the mug, replacing the kettle on its stand and turning to grab milk from his mini fridge when he crashed into a hard, warm body stood right behind him - “Double-Oh Seven! What do you think you are doing?!?”

“Christ, you're remarkably unaware of your surroundings, Q,” drawled Bond. “I could have killed you seven or eight times while you made that cuppa, and you wouldn't have noticed until you were already dead.” He smiled mirthlessly.

Q clutched at the agonising pain in his chest, fairly sure it wasn't a heart attack, and desperately gulped air into his lungs, attempting to jump-start his failed nervous system with a jolt of oxygen.

Once his pulse was only mildly elevated, Q pulled his cardigan straight, fussed with his cuffs and pushed his glasses straight before responding. “Death would probably be a blessed reprieve from dealing with you, Bond. Now, if you don't mind?” He got the milk, stirred it into his cuppa (which now resembled tea stew), fished out the teabag and viciously plopped it straight onto the counter.

Tea began to ooze from the corpse of the tea bag and Q clearly felt 007 freeze next to him.

He smiled to himself, knowing that 007’s OCD issues now had him torn between persisting in his Q-baiting and immediately cleaning up the very small mess on the countertop. Sauntering away, Q chalked this one up as a moral win, if not an outright victory, and hummed Queen’s _We Are The Champions_ quietly to himself, while behind him James Bond - lethal weapon and obsessive mopper-upper of all sorts of messes - swore, then cleaned up Q’s mess...just for a change.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bond is on his most hazardous and disturbing mission yet, with only Eve as backup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't ask where this idea came from; needless to say, writing at four am has it's perils.
> 
> Also: writing someone who has a stinking head cold is...challenging... Sorry if it's hard to read.

The flat is a mess: books and mugs and papers and all sorts cover every available surface. Clothes which may be clean or dirty (a quick sniff cannot determine which) lay draped or in little wrinkled puddles on the small, sagging sofa. Two very fat, very contented cats nest among the detritus, purring faintly and twitching as they sleep.

Surveying the mess, Bond has to suppress the urge to clean. Not here, not now. Remember the mission, he tells himself firmly, and years of conditioning rush to the front of his mind, enabling him to ignore the chaos about him and focus on the task at hand. It had seemed so simple when Eve had briefed him: a straightforward infiltration with an easy objective. Certainly, he'd had worse missions - the crazy old lady in Bolivia; being a nanny for the undercover job in Minsk; getting past the thirteen Shih-Tzu dogs belonging to the Johannesburg drug lord…

With a mental shake, he recalls himself and moves carefully through the chaos of the small flat towards the kitchen. He taps his earpiece and makes contact with Eve, who is his backup. “Eve? I'm in.”

Her voice is muffled, both with the static crackle and hiss of radio transmission, and with the heavy cold she is currently suffering from. “Excelleb, Jabes. Are you ib the kitcheb?”

James slips into the kitchen and hits the lower of the two switches on the wall which flicks on low strip-lighting under the cupboards, and he tries not to flinch at the mess which greets him. “Yes. What next?”

“You haben’t read by dotes, habe you?” she sniffs, and he smiles.

“I don't need to read your notes, Eve. You are excellent backup.”

“Fladdery will geb you dowhere,” she replies. “You neeb the cupboard next to the cooker. Upper right."

James crunches across the lino floor. “How do people live like this?” he ponders quietly, reaching for the cupboard. He has actually read Eve's notes, and quickly has what he needs prepared. “Ok, I'm nearly ready for extraction,” he informs Eve.

“One bore liddle job,” she says, and he groans.

“I've done some shitty jobs before, Eve, but this takes the biscuit.” Eve laughs, and James sighs under his breath. “Fine,” he bites out. He carefully places the two dishes of cat food on the mat by the kitchen door, noting absently that it is the cleanest spot in the entire flat, flicks the light back off, and crosses the living room to the open door which Eve's notes indicate is the bathroom of the flat. Turning the light on, he looks down and tries hard not to gag. “Do I have to do this?” he whines.

“Yes,” she says firmly. “You do.”

James sighs and pulls latex gloves from his back pocket. Snapping them on, he leans down and picks up the scoop next to the overflowing litter box. “Is it normal for cats to crap this much?” he asks as he shovels cat poop into a disposal bag. Eve just gigglesand sneezes in his ear. James disposes of the evidence where she tells him to along with his gloves, then pulls out the hand sanitiser he keeps in his jacket. He squirts the gel into his palm and rubs briskly. “Anything else?" he asks.

“Dib you cheg their wader?” Eve replies.

“Yes, it's fine,”

“You're done, theb. Good job, Double-Oh Seveb!”

Moving with the silent grace of a panther, James lets himself back out of the flat. “Eve?”

“Yes, Jabes?”

“Next time you get flu and can't cat-sit while Q’s on holiday…?”

“Yes?”

“Ask Tanner to cover you, instead, please. Our little Quartermaster lives like a slob!”

“Bed you still fancy hib, though!” she sasses.

“The heart loves where it will,” James says primly as he locks up behind himself. “But…?”

“Yes?”

“Would it be totally inappropriate to break in one night and clean the place for him? I mean, really!”

And as Eve laughs once more, explaining about personal boundaries and acceptable expressions of affection towards a man who still only really views one as an overgrown child with a concealed weapon, James Bond slides once more into the night outside the flats and becomes one with the shadows


End file.
